The Empty Chair — Original (36 × 48)

Dimensions: 36 × 48
Location: Vigo cafe

Old postcards, handwritten recipes on a refrigerator, an old Stickley chair. At an estate sale in a Midwestern home, these ordinary things set me imagining the lives that had filled the rooms before the boxes arrived.

This painting grew from that encounter. The motifs come from my own Midwestern experience; the bright colors belong to my familiar palette. I kept the colors cheerful, even as the subject moved toward absence. The tension between the two became the painting’s way of holding memory.

The empty chair is an invitation to imagine who might once have sat there. A house can be emptied in an afternoon. The lives it held take rather longer to leave.

An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image.